Palit GeForce 9600GT Sonic Review & SLI Testing - PAGE 7

We use a fully-patched Microsoft Windows Vista to test out our cards. As for drivers, the NVIDIA cards all used Forceware 169.28, except for the 9600GT which used Forceware 174.12 Beta drivers, while the ATI cards were tested with Catalyst 8.2 drivers.

And these are the games we benched, with some information on our chosen settings:

Bioshock:

For this benchmark, all of the Detail settings were set to 'High'. All of the graphic option switches were set to 'On', with the exception of the following three settings: Vsync, Windowed mode, and Force Global Lighting.

We used FRAPS to measure frame rate performance. The FRAPS run was 138 seconds, triggered from pulling the switch in the sub at game's beginning. The sub's dive involves many big models moving around, which should strain the GPU's and be a good measure of the game's engine.

Call of Juarez:

We used the stand-alone Call of Juarez DX10 benchmarking program for these results.

For our AA testing, we used a setting of 2x.

Crysis:

These benchmarks were performed using 'fly-by' GPU test found within the single-player pre-release demo version of the game. All graphic settings were on High.' For AA, we used a setting of 4x. DX10 mode was used. The game has also been fully patched (1.1).

Enemy Territory: Quake Wars:

We use this id FPS benchmark to test out a bit higher resolutions (1280x1024,1600x1200). The following settings were used: medium texture qualities, normal lighting quality, high shader effects, high terrain and foliage quality, ultra shader level, and shadows were on.

Unreal Tournament 3:

We tested the game using a fly-through of the vehicle capture-the-flag map 'Suspense.'ShangriLa (map) running for 90 seconds. Details were set to 'High', and a AF setting of 4x was used.

World In Conflict:

We used the built-in benchmark of the demo version of this game. We ran the benchmark in DX9 rendering mode, with a 'High' level of quality. For the AA testing, we used a setting of 4x, and a setting of 16x for AF.

If you would like any further information about our benchmark settings, feel free to ask us in the forums.

Comments

That Palit card is the more expensive of the bunch. But! You never know when a card is released -- it might be a while before prices fall to the 'recommended' retail price. It depends on how many cards stores have in stock, and how fast they sell.

But the 9600 GT's are shaping up to be pretty good deals. Although, with big price cut on HD 3870 cards, it's a tough call. Either way you can get a lot of game power for about 200 bucks though

Palit did a nice job on the back of the card with the ports however the heatsink is unnecessary the 8800GS is a good card for price to performance ratio but the 9600GT is not as it comes with a small increase in performance and a HDMI Cable unfortunately the Palit one did not come with a HDMI Cable. I was expecting more from nVidia somehow for example the VP3 Engine. Kevin if you haven't sent it back yet could you check what kind of Memory Palit chose? Thanks and good Review

i have these in sli with a 680i lt and a 2.66 dual and it is one of the fastest setups i have had i seguest you use the crysis bench mark test and mess with clocking till you have somthing solid witch these cards can do amazingly overall defenetly worth in halflife 2 episode 2 i get over 170 frams persecond and in crysis at 1280 x 1024 with 16xQ aa i get about 40 fps and it tops around 60 and the low is around 34